Magicians Secret // Big Mouth

1.3 Our Warmth

I used to be a much more confident person in regards to my ability to please a crowd. I used to perform magic tricks in the school hallways or mall shops with Jay, even though it was usually just a decoy so that we could steal stuff from strangers, as a magician's secret is the ability to have sly hands perfect for pickpocketing. However, high school is a much less open environment, I feel. And I never liked to make a scene there, especially without my partner in crime. Some evenings in middle school in Jay's basement, we would play video games and talk about what we thought high school would be like. I was be chewing blue bubblegum, blowing the biggest bubbles I could and then peeling off the mess that would explode onto my face while Jay sat beside me, playing with my hair, braiding pink silly string into my wavy dark locks.

"Val said that if we do magic there, we're gonna get killed." Jay shrugged, scrunching up his face irritably.

"Not killed." I argued, as my GTA avatar jacked a car on the side of the road, "I mean, we're not going to prison."

"I don't know..." Jay warned, "From what Val tells me, there's not much of a difference."

"Are you sure he's not just winding you up?" I questioned and Jay paused, moving away from my hair and leaning back on the dusty orange beanbag chair that matched my seat, half full of beans, exhaling breaths of Dorito dust every time you would shift slightly.

"Maybe. He also said I shouldn't wear my new jeans to school, so maybe I just shouldn't listen to him at all." he contemplated, taking the controller from my hands to increase my avatar's pace and helping me to not die. I turned on the beanbag to face him, blowing another bubble until it was thin like tissue paper and reaching the size of my facial circumference.

"The red ones?" I asked out of the side of my mouth and he nodded, making me recline, "He's right about that, you look like an angry bird."

Jay sneered at me and kicked my beanbag over so that I was tipped onto the dirty floor, laughing.

Once I began high school, I tried to make myself as little known as possible. I was a shadow in the corridors, forever a stranger. Until today, as I cling my throbbing head, trudging through the halls like a zombie with the personality of a deadbeat alcoholic dad as I suffer through the typical after-party hangover, giving my reflection the empty promise of 'I'll never drink again' for purely dramatic effect. I intend to survive the day rather than live it, and wake up tomorrow with enough motivation to handle school work and social interaction. While my mind is firmly stuck on this ideal, Tyler has other plans, evil, disruptive plans concocting in his functioning, one-drink-last-night brain.

Tyler and I didn't have a very romantic relationship, in fact the relationship I share with the cashier at my local corner shop is probably more communicative. Our connection was a campfire flame, destined to be extinguished due to poor nourishment. To expand, our interactions consisted of either awkward making out in his bedroom where I had to clumsily crawl through his window, or in the janitor's closet in school, each location riddled with germs and probably mice under the floorboards. So, not a huge loss, considering that these were the only times Tyler even so much as acknowledged me, something he rarely did even when we were together.

However, somehow the loss of my lips is a heavier loss to Tyler than i could have ever anticipated, as he yells out to me in the hallway, running up to me and pulling me aside at the lockers for everyone to see. I am dressed head to toe in sweats, my hair scraggly and stringy, half of my face covered up by a huge dark pair of avoiding-paparazzi sunglasses, and I look just about the worst I possibly could on the one day people have actually paid attention to my appearance.

Thanks God, thanks a bunch.

Tyler looks as he usually does, beautiful. Tyler is half-Japanese, has dark silky hair that falls in perfect curtain bangs around his face, hazel eyes like pools of honey, and plump lips that just from observation you can tell he's a good kisser. Why he ever chose to hook up with me, I'll never know. It's not like I think I'm absolutely hideous, just painfully average: with disproportioned facial features, a bumpy body and the hair of an elderly witch. But here I am, being spoken to by Tyler, in front of a large portion of high school students.